Apartheid’s legacy of mistrust and prejudice has prevented South Africa from establishing a truly stable multiracial democracy. But increasing contact among the races and the emergence of a black middle class offer hope of reducing the role of race in national politics.

Racial tensions have been at the center of American political debate recently, but the story of racial and ethnic division is actually a global one. So for the March/April issue, we did a deep dive into racial issues in comparative and historical perspective.

Kurds have a right to take Turkey to task for its inaction in Kobani, just as Turks have a right to insist that Kurdish suffering in Syria does not give the PKK license to kill civilians or off-duty soldiers in Turkey.

As the turmoil in Ferguson unfolds, questions about the United States' commitment to human rights are once more headlining news coverage around the world. That should not be surprising. American racial inequality regularly dominated foreign news coverage during the 1950s and 1960s. And U.S. policymakers were eventually forced to respond, in part to protect the United States' image abroad.

There seems to be little connecting recent violence in Ukraine to the destabilization of Iraq. But both conflicts spring from a common source, the mismatch between state boundaries and national identities -- a “state-to-nation imbalance.”

From Turkey’s perspective, Kurdish autonomy is starting to look like a good thing. The portions of northern Iraq and Syria that are under Kurdish control are stable and peaceful -- a perfect bulwark against threats such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). And that is why Turkey has been on good behavior with the Iraqi Kurds, is working on its relations with the Syrian Kurds, and might finally be breaking the impasse with the Kurds in its own territory.

In 1971, the Pakistani government orchestrated a brutal military crackdown against the Bengali population in East Pakistan -- while the United States stuck by its ally Pakistan. Gary Bass's new book spotlights the “significant complicity” of U.S. President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, in this “forgotten genocide.”

It would be obscene to say that the genocide in Rwanda had even the thinnest silver lining. But it did create a natural -- or unnatural -- experiment, as the country’s social, economic, and political institutions were wiped out. In important respects, the reconstructed Rwanda is a dramatically different country, especially for women.

Destroying or dismembering Ukraine serves no country’s interests, least of all Russia’s. After all, it is in Russia’s best interest to have a stable, prosperous, and friendly Ukraine on its borders. The only thing the move could serve is the megalomaniacal Putin.